Bell of the Ball

Kristen Bell is having what Hollywood calls "a moment." She's on a hit show (Heroes), in a great movie (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and dating a new guy. And it couldn't happen to a cooler chick. This is truly one of the funniest interviews ever.

Kristen Bell breezes into Vivian's Millennium Café in
California's Studio City like she owns the place. And
judging by the overjoyed reaction from the waitstaff,
she just might. "Want a K. Bell spesh?" one of the
waitresses asks the diminutive actress. The K. Bell
special, it turns out, is an off-the-menu item that Kristen,
who lives nearby, orders nearly every time she
comes in, which is about three or four times a week.
The waitress ticks off the ingredients, and Kristen responds
with an enthusiastic "check" after each one, like
a well-rehearsed comedy routine: "Rye, toasted."
"Check." "Egg whites." "Check." "Tomatoes." "Check."
"Avocado." "Check." "American." "Check." "Lettuce."
"Check." "Mayonnaise." "Love you!"

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A lot of people, especially actors, like it when they're
described as down-to-earth, approachable, and easygoing.
But it's hard to imagine anyone embodying
these traits as legitimately as Kristen Bell does. The
27-year-old Michigan native's ability to flit easily
between the smart and funny tomboy (like she did on
the cult favorite TV series Veronica Mars), the mysterious
femme fatale (on the hit NBC series Heroes),
and the epicenter of romantic-comedy entanglements
(in the new movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall) marks
Kristen as a talent to be reckoned with. (She's even the
voice of the mischievous faceless blogger on the CW'sGossip Girl.) "It's funny," she muses. "The feedback
I've always gotten is that I was not nearly pretty enough
to play the pretty girl and not homely enough to play
the ugly girl. So I've always been like 'I've got to be
able to fit in somewhere!'"

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Kristen, who grew up just outside Detroit, admits
that she was tomboyish like her character in Veronica
Mars and a "very strange child" (at age 3, she announced
to her parents that she was changing her name to
Smurfette). Kristen would often eat her meals alongside
her dogs…with no hands. It's that kind of behavior,
she says, that explains why she's been a vegetarian since
she was 11 years old. "I'm empathetic to a fault. I really
do, embarrassingly enough, tear up when someone
squishes a bug in front of me. So I couldn't disassociate
my dog from a burger."

Now that she's a grown-up, Kristen is relishing playing,
well, grown-ups in her latest projects, Heroes andForgetting Sarah Marshall. "I'm going to be 28 this
year," she says. "I've consistently
played about 10 years
younger than I am. I've been looking for something different, and Heroes
hit all those dots. My character was older,
she was girlie, and she was wicked. Before
that, I had only played sweet, young, root-for-
the-underdog tomboys."

Among her other adult pursuits is dating,
which she says she finds to be an incredibly
nerve-racking experience. "It's a scary thing,
especially in this town," she sighs. "Getting to
know someone and being vulnerable...I think
it's difficult for everyone. But it's wildly amplified
in this industry." And the constant gossip-press
attention certainly doesn't help. "I could spend all
day weeping about the bad parts of this career, but
I wouldn't change it. You just buck up and get a
thicker skin, you know?"

Figuring out what you want in a guy helps. And on
this point, Kristen, who as of press time was dating
fellow actor Dax Shepard, is crystal clear. She keeps
an eye out for red flags—being rude to waiters is a
huge turn-off—but at the end of the day, she believes
that any potential relationship has to boil down to
simple give-and-take. "Being able to make me laugh
is my number one," she says. "But my number two
is being able to make him laugh."

As if on cue, a giant grasshopper about the length
of Kristen's hand lands squarely on her shoulder,
stopping her midsentence. Suddenly, the whole scene
becomes something out of a Disney movie. "This has
happened to me my entire life!" she says, her voice
hushed and her eyes wide. "Animals have this bizarre
connection to me. My friends say, 'It's like you're
Sleeping fucking Beauty, dude!' " When the waitress
insists that it's probably a sign of good luck, Kristen
pauses and gets thoughtful. "This is very apropos
because it's kind of how I feel about my career—that
it's all been luck." The moment of reflection passes
quickly, and the wiseass tomboy returns. "He's probably
taking a dump on my shoulder!"